Despite receipt of Bluetooth 5 certification, HTC U11 won’t run new features until Android O is installed

The HTC U11 has received its Bluetooth 5.0 certification from the Bluetooth SIG. But that doesn’t mean that the phone’s new Bluetooth capabilities are now available. The new features won’t be completely offered to users until the next build of Android, Android O, is actually installed on the handset later this year. The new version of Bluetooth will allow data to be transmitted at speeds twice as fast as presently available, and transmission distance will increase by a factor of four. The amount of information and data sent in each broadcast will increase by as much as eight times the current number.

Helping to prevent logjams and interference will be new algorithms designed to prevent Bluetooth users from using transmission channels already being employed for Wi-Fi or LTE. According to the Special Interest Group, Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) specifications for audio transmissions are still in flux and should be finished by the end of 2017.

The thing to remember is that Android N does not support any of the Bluetooth 5 features. On the other hand, Android O will support Bluetooth 5 natively.

Right now, the HTC U11 and Samsung Galaxy S8 are the only Android-flavored handsets that have received their Bluetooth 5 certification.